This description of Sunwar, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in eastern Nepal, is based on extensive field work by the author and contains a chapter with background information on the Sunwar language, its speakers and their culture, followed by sections on the phonology, the indigenous writing system and the morphology of Sunwar. Verb paradigms, glossed texts, a Sunwar-English glossary and bibliographical references are also presented.

Contact between the Sunwar and Nepali languages resulted in language change, most visible in the verbal system, where the older biactantial agreement system typical for Kiranti languages disappeared and suffix conjugations emerged. This book will interest those interested in descriptive linguistics, language change and languages of South Asia.

About the author(s) Dörte Borchers , Ph.D. (2007) in Descriptive Linguistics, Leiden University, has published on language politics, minority languages, and Sunwar and done research on Burmese. She is currently working on the documentation of Surel.

Readership Linguists and anthropologists working on languages of South and Central Asia, linguistic typologists and all those with an interest in Himalayan languages and cultures. Keywords Descriptive linguistics, language documentation, language typology, language change, South Asia, Central Asia, Nepal, Sunwar, Kiranti, HImalaya, Tibeto-Burman linguistics